The next day, at noon, Zanoni visited Viola; and the
next day and the next and again the next,—­days
that to her seemed like a special time set apart from
the rest of life. And yet he never spoke to her
in the language of flattery, and almost of adoration,
to which she had been accustomed. Perhaps his
very coldness, so gentle as it was, assisted to this
mysterious charm. He talked to her much of her
past life, and she was scarcely surprised (she now
never thought of terror) to perceive how much
of that past seemed known to him.

He made her speak to him of her father; he made her
recall some of the airs of Pisani’s wild music.
And those airs seemed to charm and lull him into reverie.

“As music was to the musician,” said he,
“may science be to the wise. Your father
looked abroad in the world; all was discord to the
fine sympathies that he felt with the harmonies that
daily and nightly float to the throne of Heaven.
Life, with its noisy ambition and its mean passions,
is so poor and base! Out of his soul he created
the life and the world for which his soul was fitted.
Viola, thou art the daughter of that life, and wilt
be the denizen of that world.”

In his earlier visits he did not speak of Glyndon.
The day soon came on which he renewed the subject.
And so trustful, obedient, and entire was the allegiance
that Viola now owned to his dominion, that, unwelcome
as that subject was, she restrained her heart, and
listened to him in silence.

At last he said, “Thou hast promised thou wilt
obey my counsels, and if, Viola, I should ask thee,
nay adjure, to accept this stranger’s hand,
and share his fate, should he offer to thee such a
lot,—­wouldst thou refuse?”

And then she pressed back the tears that gushed to
her eyes; and with a strange pleasure in the midst
of pain,—­the pleasure of one who sacrifices
heart itself to the one who commands that heart,—­she
answered falteringly, “If thou canst ordain
it, why—­”

“Speak on.”

“Dispose of me as thou wilt!”

Zanoni stood in silence for some moments: he
saw the struggle which the girl thought she concealed
so well; he made an involuntary movement towards her,
and pressed her hand to his lips; it was the first
time he had ever departed even so far from a certain
austerity which perhaps made her fear him and her
own thoughts the less.

“Viola,” said he, and his voice trembled,
“the danger that I can avert no more, if thou
linger still in Naples, comes hourly near and near
to thee! On the third day from this thy fate
must be decided. I accept thy promise. Before
the last hour of that day, come what may, I shall see
thee again, here, at thine own house. Till
then, farewell!”

CHAPTER 3.IV.

Between two worlds life
hovers like a star
’Twixt night and
morn.
—­Byron.